This politicization of the courts was the focus of a recent report from Brennan Center For Justice at the New York University Law School. In it, the authors examine the growing cost of state Supreme Court races, and the heightened potential influence donor dollars might have on the judges that receive them..

The report found that record-breaking money is being spent on state Supreme Court races across the country. And that’s led court-watchers and advocates of independent jurisprudence to worry aloud whether all this money is undermining courts seen as the last word in state law disputes and a check on the executive and legislative branches of state government…

…Causing the greatest distress is the growing prevalence of so-called “dark money” in state judicial campaigns. Traditionally, candidate-specific groups — the super PACs one hears of every election cycle — are required to disclose donors under federal and many states’ laws.

Also, the 2016 California State Bar Program posted the following video from October 2, 2016 that examines the California Constitution’s system for electing justices and judges to determine how the ‘elections can influence the administration of justice’. The speakers in the video below include UC Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and former California Supreme Court Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso. Take a look:

DC AUTHORS

Dairy farming is the perfect microcosm for all the ways big money and bad policy is destroying local control of our food supply, devastating rural economies and filling us up with chemically enhanced products.

We, the voters, are frustrated! Until this reform occurs, the people who give the biggest campaign contributions can rather easily pass the corrupt laws they want. And they can continue to block the solutions that most voters want.

Ethnic tribalism and the poison of religion with its magical fairy tales are the weak links where malevolent actors like Russia can manipulate and damage democracy – even in a modern European context like Serbia.

I love Bernie Sanders. I also have a soft spot for Elizabeth Warren. I want them both and I want them both now. They would be better than the dynamic duo, power couple or gruesome twosome. They would be Elizabeth and Bernie!

The middle class and the poor need the tax breaks, not the Oligarchs at the top. There are property taxes, income taxes, alcohol taxes, license plate taxes, utility taxes, tobacco taxes, gasoline taxes and more.